After Gloomy Sales News, Retailers Falling

By Sam Mamudi

REUTERS

Enough

Retailers and apparel makers are having a rough morning, with Macy’s (M) the biggest decliner on the Standard & Poor’s 500 index. Also falling are shares of Ralph Lauren (RL), Coach (COH), Urban Outfitters (URBN) and Nordstrom (JWN). The stocks are down 2% to 3% on a day when the S&P 500 is down a small fraction.

As I noted earlier, new data suggests it’s been a fairly poor holiday season for shopping. It’s not just the topline 0.7% growth (lowest since 2008) from MasterCard SpendingPulse that’s dampening the mood, either:

Retail consulting firm Customer Growth Partners said 2012 looks like the worst holiday-shopping season since 2009. Sales rose roughly 2.8%, after a 5.8% jump in 2011, according to its president,Craig Johnson.

The firm’s estimates are based on government data, information from retailers, and observations from researchers in stores, malls and on the Internet.

Even online shopping, which has posted double-digit growth the past few years, registered more-muted gains. Online sales for the holiday rose to $48 billion, an 8.4% increase from 2011, according to SpendingPulse.

U.S. home prices slipped in October from a month earlier amid expected seasonal weakness but were up from a year earlier, suggesting a sustained housing-market recovery, according to Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller home-price indexes.

The Case-Shiller index of 10 major metropolitan areas and the 20-city index eased 0.1% in October from September. On a seasonally adjusted basis, the indexes rose 0.6% and 0.7%, respectively.

Compared with a year earlier, the 10-city index increased 3.4%.

As the story notes, this does suggest the housing recovery is getting stronger, albeit judged by a lagging indicator. If that is the case, then consumers are going start feeling financially better off — maybe this fall’s disappointing retail figures will be just a blip.

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